Covenant News

New Look, New Search Tools Enhance Covenant Site

CHICAGO, IL (October 30, 2001) - New navigational tools and a fresh look greeted visitors to the website of the Evangelical Covenant Church this week, reflecting an ongoing improvement process involving staff members of the Department of Communication and others representing denominational, conference and local church ministries.

"The changes reflect our commitment to continue expanding the site to be of greater service to the church in providing not only news and information, but also helpful resources that complement ministry in all areas," said Don Meyer, the department's executive minister.

The retooled home page includes four navigational tools, Meyer noted. Tabs across the top of the page guide visitors to broad subject categories. A box at the upper right contains links to major Covenant institutions and popular resourcing centers. A pull-down menu provides an alphabetical listing of major departments, institutions, specific ministries and general interest areas to help speed the search for information. And, a general search window at the upper left allows visitors to enter key words and search the entire site.

A special Help feature has been added, containing four tips for conducting searches on the site. It also provides three convenient links allowing visitors to ask questions about the site itself, to purchase resources online from Covenant Bookstore or to reach Covenant Resource Center to obtain advice on local ministry development, obtain departmental publications and ask questions.

The home page continues to provide Covenant news, but with a different look. A limited number of top news headlines of the day are provided, with two or three lines of the story displayed. There is a link to the full news report, as well as a link to the news archive so that visitors can browse a number of previously published stories. Future plans call for addition of a fully searchable news archive.

"Visitors may have noticed the increase in the number of new stories posted almost every day," Meyer said. "These stories remain in the full news report for a much briefer period of time before being moved to the news archive," Meyer said in stressing the importance of more frequent visits to the site to keep current with news from throughout the Covenant.

The home page will continue to highlight major Covenant events under the Features section and will contain a weekly prayer request taken from Covenant Home Altar. It also will continue to feature the current issue of The Covenant Companion.

"Feedback is important to us," Meyer said, asking that suggestions for further improvement to the Covenant site be directed to the Department of Communication using the webmaster link at the bottom of the home page. Churches also are reminded that many of the leads for news stories come from local church newsletters. Churches are requested to add the Department of Communication to their newsletter mailing lists by regular mail at 5101 N. Francisco Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60625, or by email to newsdesk@covchurch.org.

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